How To Find Your Financial Advisor With Drew Richey and Shawn Perry

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Summary:

[121] – Are you in need of a financial advisor but don’t know where to start looking or what you should be looking for?

In this episode, Jeremy Keil speaks with the authors of Finding Your Financial Advisor, Drew Richey, CFP®, CRPS® and Shawn Perry, CFP®, CPWA®. They discuss the topic of their book in hopes of helping you find where you can start looking and what you should look for when you want to hire a financial advisor.

Drew and Shawn discuss:

• How to take ownership of your own financial circumstances
• What minimum standards to look for when searching to hire a financial advisor
• What to ask a financial advisor during an initial interview
• How to decide on a financial advisor if you’ve found more than one good option
• And more

How To Find Your Financial Advisor

As someone who isn’t a financial advisor, there are things about the financial industry that you need to understand. The most important one is that there isn’t a standard curriculum or program for becoming a financial advisor like there is in so many other industries, like becoming an attorney.

Anyone can print a business card and claim to be a financial advisor, so finding a good one who will meet your financial needs is difficult. Below is a list of things you need to know while on your journey to hiring a financial advisor who is right for you.

Take Ownership of Your Financial Advisor Decision

The first part of our guests’, Richey, CFP®, CRPS®, and Shawn Perry, CFP®, CPWA®’s book Finding Your Financial Advisor, says to take ownership of your financial circumstances.

Once you have an advisor doesn’t mean you don’t have to worry about your finances anymore. It’s not meant to scare you, but your finances are a big deal, especially during transition periods like retiring. So, leaving it up to someone else isn’t the best idea.

You get one shot at navigating the transition you’re going through; you shouldn’t do it yourself, but you should understand why you need help and how to get the right kind of help that you need from a financial professional.

Create Your Minimum Standards for Your Financial Advisor

When you know what you need help with and are ready to start looking for it, what minimum standards should you look for in a financial advisor? Find Your Financial Advisor compiled five minimum standards for hiring a financial advisor.

5 Standards:

• Education
• Background check
• Services offered
• Practice Profile, how they’re structured
• Cost of doing business with them

Running a background check on a potential financial advisor is an easy way to see where they’re registered, how they’re registered, and if they’ve had any past issues. People may have things on their record, but they need to be able to explain them, and there needs to be transparency. So if the financial advisor you’re interviewing isn’t being transparent or can’t explain something that came up on their record, they can’t establish trust with you as their client.

Drew and Shawn provide a free-to-download pre-meeting checklist and hiring guide that is also provided in their book.

These are not the minimum standards that financial advisors should aim for. Still, they are the categories that you need to consider before hiring one and decide for yourself – what education you’re looking for, what’s important to you in a background check, what services you’re looking for and if they offer the services you need, what their practice needs to look like. 

There are many different ways that businesses can be structured and a lot of different ways people can attain financial services, but you need to be empowered and understand what it is you’re looking for.

Interview Your Potential Financial Advisor Candidates

Once you know what you’re looking for and how to tell if an advisor offers what you need, it’s time to conduct interviews.

It’s great to write out all the questions you have to ask each advisor, but if they tell you what you wanted to hear for one of the questions, don’t disregard your list and forget about the rest of them. It’s important to ask them all of your questions because even if they answer one well, an answer to another might be a deal breaker.

For example, they might be a certified financial planner and fiduciary, but if they don’t offer the specific services you need, then they really wouldn’t be a good match for you.

In Finding Your Financial Advisor, interviewing was divided into the core values of Drew and Shawn’s team: wisdom, discipline, transparency, and humility. These core values categorize the 25-30 questions and processes you should go through regarding interviews that are provided both with the book and in their free-to-download hiring guide.

The hiring guide can be taken with you to your interviews and allows you to score the advisor being interviewed, get questions that might generate more information, and compare them to other advisors they interviewed and scored.

Decide Which Financial Advisor is Best for Your

If you find more than one good option, you’ll find yourself needing to make a choice between advisors. 

There is no doubt that this is difficult. In order to get the best results, define your minimum standards as well as your interview answers, and take your time to review them.

Ideally, it would be best if you had this done well before you enter those transition periods, such as retirement, so you can avoid makings last-minute decisions under pressure and take your time to make the right choice.

Not all advisors or their teams are created equal. We really want to emphasize the need to take your time to find what you need, who can provide it for you, and who of those meets your minimum standards before you make a final decision.

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To learn more about finding a financial advisor, check out the resources below!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us or our guests, Drew Richey and Shawn Perry, using the contact information provided below!

Resources:

• Find Your Financial Advisor – Hiring Guide
• Finding Your Financial Advisor by Drew Richey and Shawn Perry
• Free Retirement Planning Video Course: 5stepretirementplan.com
• 3 Things You Should Know Before Choosing A Financial Advisor
• 7 Questions That Could Make or Break Your Retirement
• Subscribe to Retirement Revealed on Google Podcasts
• Subscribe to Retirement Revealed on Apple Podcasts

Connect With Drew Richey and Shawn Perry:

• ThePerryRicheyGroup.com
• FindingYourFinancialAdvisor.com
• The Perry Richey Group Podcast
• LinkedIn: Drew Richey, CFP®, CRPS®
• LinkedIn: Shawn Perry, CFP®, CPWA®

Connect With Jeremy Keil:

• Jeremy@keilfp.com
• 262-333-8353
• Keil Financial Partners
• LinkedIn: Jeremy Keil
• Facebook: Jeremy Keil
• LinkedIn: Keil Financial Partners
• Book a call with Jeremy

About Our Guests:

Drew Richey, CFP®, CRPS® is a Certified Financial Planner™, and the Director and a Financial Advisor at The Perry Richey Group of Baird Private Wealth Management. He joined as their Senior Vice President and Financial Advisor in 2005 and has over 17 years of experience with them. Before joining The Perry Richey Group, Drew completed his Bachelor of Science in Business and Managerial Economics at Western Kentucky University.

Shawn Perry, CFP®, CPWA® is the Managing Director at The Perry Richey Group of Baird Private Wealth Management. Shawn worked his way through college at Nat’s Outdoor Sports while earning his degree in financial planning from Western Kentucky University in 1999. Shawn is a Certified Financial Planner™ and is instrumental in the initial stages of the team’s wealth forecasting plan. His keen balance of big-picture strategy and detailed execution provide strong leadership and service to his clients. In 2016 Shawn completed the Certified Private Wealth Advisor® certification program.

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